Quintessential Exploratorium Exhibits

You may recognize a few of these exhibits — some old, some new — from your local science center. But they were all originally developed by San Francisco’s Exploratorium, now celebrating its 40th year.

Distorted Room (1971)
Either the room looks distorted or the people seem to shrink and grow. Most viewers (and cameras) make a perceptual leap and see an illusion. Why is it that you are willing to see people change size rather than see a rectangle lose its shape?

Tactile Dome (1974)
A pitch-black, geodesic dome with thirteen chambers and no right angles. First remove your shoes and socks. Then, crawl, slide, touch and find your way through using only your sense of touch. Designed in 1974 by August Coppola (the father of movie actor Nicholas Cage and the brother of filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola) and Carl Day

Sun Painting (1976)
At the Sun Painting, the colors of the sun dance for you, or you can dance among them. Instead of painting with pots of pigment on paper, this artwork by longtime staff artist Bob Miller created in 1970, paints the air with broad brush strokes of color from the sun. From the moment it first appeared, the Sun Painting was one of the Exploratorium’s most popular exhibits.

Anti-Gravity Mirror (1979)
A freestanding mirror allows visitors to play with the symmetry of their own body and create such visual affects as flying, or shrinking and growing.

Tornado (1985)
A fog reservoir is continually pulled upward in an inverted vortex — a 17-foot tornado of fog. Created at the Exploratorium in 1985 by long-time staff member Ned Kahn. Kahn went on to win a 2003 MacArthur “Genius” Award for his environmental artworks that explore fluid dynamics and the cutting edge of chaos theory.

Bathroom Wall Illusion (1997)
Even a trip to the Exploratorium’s restrooms is an interactive experience. The black and white pattern on the restroom wall turns out to be a perceptual illusion featuring parallel rows of alternating black and white tiles that seem anything but parallel.

Hoop Nightmares (1997)
Wear prism glasses as you try to play a game of tabletop basketball. Test your accuracy before, during, and after wearing the glasses and notice how you change your “body memory” as you try to play this game, which is an investigation of the mind.

Interactive Mouse Stem Cell Exhibit (2005)
In the first of its kind public display, witness the transition from stem cells in their undifferentiated state and their progress towards a mass of pulsating, beating heart cells – cardiac myocytes, the cells that would form the heart.

A Sip of Conflict (2007)
Play with the tension between logic and emotion as you drink from a water fountain fashioned from an actual (but unused!) toilet.

Light Traces (2009)
Capture your motion in three dimensions using traces of light.

Cow’s Eye Dissection
A live demonstration by high-school-age Explainers — they dissect a cow’s eye to reveal how the eye sees. The first dissections were of pig’s eyes in 1970; all are recycled from slaughterhouses for educational purposes.

Check out http://www.exploratorium.edu/40th/